


One Desperate Space

by voleuse



Category: Smallville
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-04
Updated: 2009-03-04
Packaged: 2017-10-04 02:09:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voleuse/pseuds/voleuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>And now the fishes come</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Desperate Space

**Author's Note:**

> Set after 7.10. Title and summary adapted from Robert Frost's _Despair_.

Chloe had always thought the death of the editor-in-chief would be marked by more than an unheralded adjustment to the masthead. She wasn't the ace reporter she'd dreamed about being--not yet, anyway--but the _Planet_ chewed through editors like peanut brittle, and death, especially Grant Gabriel's death, merited more than an obit in regular typeface.

Aside from wearing black, nobody remarked on what had happened. The focus, instead, was on the available position, and the new owner's residence in the office on the top floor. Chloe shrugged off the expected inquiries from reporters with long memories, the ones who knew Chloe came from the same hometown, the ones who remembered seeing Chloe's name in newsprint years ago.

She wanted Lois to crack a smile, joke about the one good thing about being trapped in Smallville, but she never did.

The day following the hushed changes, Chloe received a memo to meet with Lex at afternoon's end. She spent the morning with one eye on the digital tick of her computer's clock, the other on Lois. They typed out messages to each other, one wild hypothesis after another, stories they'd never be able to chase down, each one ending with _Luthor_.

When the time for her meeting came, she shut down her computer and sighed. "Do you think _The Inquisitor_ has any openings?" she wondered.

Lois snorted. "Only if they don't take me back."

"Right." She pushed back in her chair and straightened her jacket. "Destiny waits."

"I'll pick up extra ice cream."

The elevator took hours, it seemed, to ascend from the basement to the top floor. When she stepped past the doors, she looked to the right, at Lex's freshly-stencilled name.

Then she looked to the left, where someone from maintenance was scraping Gabriel's name off the door. Chloe had hated Gabriel, even putting the Lois thing aside, but she shivered at the erasure.

The door to Lex's office opened, and a man nodded at Chloe. "Miss Sullivan?" he asked.

She nodded, and swallowed down everything except her defiance.

**Author's Note:**

> Written because, as of 7.12, nobody has really reacted to Grant's death, which is REALLY WEIRD, considering he was shot during an ostensible mugging in front of a fancy restaurant while standing next to Lionel Luthor.


End file.
